Palestinian football pitch faces Israel demolition ultimatum

A Palestinian children’s soccer club in the occupied West Bank faces imminent demolition despite an international campaign to save it. Its supporters say it provides a rare sporting opportunity for young Palestinian players.

But Israel insists that it was built without the necessary permits.

In this deeply divided land there are many differences; From the identities and beliefs of the people who live here, to every inch of land they stand on.

More recently, this has included a small patch of artificial turf placed under the shadow of the giant concrete wall that isolates Israel from much of the occupied West Bank.

In the context of the October 7 attacks, the two-year-old war in Gaza, and the fragility of the current ceasefire, there are undoubtedly far more pressing issues.

But this is a story charged with symbolism and has attracted significant international attention because of its association with the otherworldly religion – football.

On the day of our visit, a group of Palestinian children lined up to take penalty kicks under the winter sun.

Construction of the stadium here on the outskirts of Bethlehem began in 2020, and today it provides a training ground for more than 200 young players from the nearby Aida refugee camp.

The narrow, crowded streets contain the homes of descendants of Palestinian families who were displaced or fled their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

On November 3 last year, when the children made the short walk from the camp to attend training that day, they found a notice posted on the gate of the football field declaring it illegal.

This notice was quickly followed by a demolition order.

“We don’t have anywhere else to play,” 10-year-old Naya told me, wearing a Brazil T-shirt bearing the name of soccer legend Neymar on the back.

“We build our dreams here,” she said. “If they demolish our field, they will demolish our dreams.”

I asked another young player, Mohamed, how he reacted when he heard the news that the club had been destroyed.

“I was upset,” he told me. “This is an area I’m really interested in.”

The community fought back, posting videos on social media, launching a petition that attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures, and receiving messages of international support.

The club says that after presenting a lawyer, it was recently granted a seven-day grace period.

But that extension expired on Monday, leaving her with a difficult choice.

As is common in such cases, club owners must either demolish the stadium themselves or wait for the Israeli authorities to do so by force, after which they will be presented with the bill.

The looming presence of the wall, which runs along one of the lines of contact, is just one of the many complex layers underpinning Israel’s occupation of lands that Palestinians want as the basis for their future state.

From a military standpoint, Israel exercises control over the entire West Bank.

But administrative control – day-to-day governance – is divided between a patchwork of Palestinian-administered areas and Israeli-administered areas.

The maps on which these distinctions are based were drawn as a key part of the Oslo Accords, which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed in the 1990s.

The West Bank was divided into three categories of land.

Areas A and B were enclaves of land over which the Palestinian Authority was granted civilian control.

In areas designated as Area A, Palestinians were also given nominal security control.

Area C – more than 60% of the total territory – was to remain temporarily under full Israeli control.

The idea was that it would eventually be gradually transferred to Palestinian self-rule as negotiations continued.

Although that never happened, with both sides blaming each other for the failure of the peace process, the maps remain the basis for much of how the West Bank is managed today.

Bethlehem itself is classified as Area A.

But the maps show that Israel exercises civil authority in Area C over a large portion of the surrounding rural areas, up to the outskirts of the city.

Israel began building its concrete barrier in the early 2000s in the face of a wave of deadly suicide bombings and other attacks by Palestinians that killed hundreds of Israelis.

Critics claim that today, as the wall grows in length, it has become a tool to punish many thousands of ordinary Palestinians, separating them from their workplaces, dividing their communities, and effectively annexing parts of their lands.

But what is now at issue in Bethlehem is a small, narrow patch of land on the Palestinian side of the wall.

For Aida camp residents looking for space to build a football field, it is large enough to accommodate their needs.

But for Israel, it remains – marked on maps – as part of Area C, even though the construction of the wall has left it cut off on the Bethlehem side.

Satellite images show the space was vacant in 2019, and then, year after year, the stadium can be seen starting to take shape, fitting snugly against the wall.

The demolition order says it was built without the necessary permits on a plot of land that Israel still has full civilian control of.

For Palestinians, there is no small irony in the fact that they are denied the right to build a small football field on the border of their city, within the wall that surrounds them.

While Israel refuses to permit their construction and demolition of existing buildings, Israel continues to approve the construction of large-scale new Israeli settlements in Area C, which are illegal under international law.

Last September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement to move forward with the construction of a large and highly controversial settlement that will house 20,000 Israelis.

It lies between occupied East Jerusalem and the existing Maale Adumim settlement, and if completed would effectively divide the West Bank in half, which Palestinians say would destroy their aspirations for statehood.

The Israeli government agrees to this.

“There will be no Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said during the signing ceremony. “This place belongs to us.”

Some of his ministers speak openly about the complete annexation of the West Bank.

In Bethlehem, the football club – which claims to have received verbal permission in 2020 to build the stadium – believes the demolition threat is about much more than just planning law.

“The Israelis don’t want us to have any kind of hope, they don’t want us to have any chance,” Muhammad Abu Srour, a board member of the Aida Youth Center, told me.

He suggested that the idea was to deliberately make life difficult.

“The moment we lose hope and opportunity, we will leave. This is the only explanation for us.”

We have reached out to the Israeli body that administers civil affairs in the West Bank for comment.

Although the demolition order was issued in her name, we were referred to the Israeli army, which supervises its work.

The IDF provided us with the following statement.

He added: “Along the security fence, there is a confiscation order and a ban on construction, so construction in the area was done illegally.”

As they wait to see what happens next, the children of Aida hope the international attention will be enough to sway the minds of the authorities.

But for now, as the wider conflict continues, the future of a small football stadium hangs in the balance.